Said type of undersea cable includes a central conductor formed by strands of high-strength steel wire (forming a strength member), said strands being covered by a longitudinally welded copper tube drawn down onto the strength member and has no outer metal armouring, since such armouring is only provided for cables laid in shallow coastal waters. Up till now, undersea cables could be connected to the housings of repeaters in only two ways: either by fixing the cable to the repeater by fixing the central strength member to a mechanical fixing part integral with the housing, or by reconstituting the outer metal armouring of the cable over a few tens of meters, which reduced the connection problem to that of connecting a cable having outer metal armouring.
Fixing the cable by means of the central strength member such as is described for example in British Pat. No. 1,280,439 requires a mechanical universal joint to avoid the danger of too sharp bending at the point where the cable joins the housing of the repeater, said sharp bending being due to the great difference in flexibility of the two components which are to be connected together. However, said joint is complicated and expensive to manufacture. French Pat. No. 2,319,227 describes how a cable may be fixed by means of the central strength member without using a universal joint, the fixing means including a cone which surrounds and supports the cable where it leaves the fixing system which fixes it to the casing of the repeater, the cone being rigidly connected to the casing and allowing the cable to flex more at its free end. However, such fixing is still fairly complex and takes a relatively long time to perform.
As for reconstituting an outer armouring on a cable which initially had no such armouring, this requires specialized machines and can be performed only in a factory. Therefore, repairs during laying become very difficult.
The present invention aims to remedy these drawbacks and to allow a cable to be fixed to the housing of a repeater by means of simple inexpensive parts which can be prepared in advance; this enables repairs to be made even on board a cable-laying ship which has no special machines.